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Add name tags in Picasa

Picasa's face-matching technology lets you organize your photos according to the people in them. Name tags are turned on by default, so the first time you open Picasa, it will scan your photos for new faces.

Name tags are turned on by default in the Picasa software, which means that Picasa will use face-matching technology to scan your photos for faces. Adding name tags to these faces lets you organize your photos by the people in them. You can turn it on or off at anytime:

In Picasa, click Tools > Options (PC) or Picasa > Preferences (Mac).

Click the Name Tags tab.

Toggle the 'Enable face detection' checkbox.

Click OK.

This can take a while, but while it's running in the background you can start tagging them. Just follow these steps:

In bulk: Click on the 'Unnamed People' album in the 'People' collection to see all unnamed faces from your photos in the one place. Faces are grouped by similarity, so adding a name will apply it to all the faces in that group.

A few photos at a time: Click the People button in the bottom-right corner when viewing any folder, album, or photo to see all the faces that appear in the selected photos. Add names to those that need it.

Create people albums. Keep tagging. Ignore the people you don't know.

Picasa will create an album for each person you tag in your 'People' collection. Toggle the button to zoom in on faces or zoom back out to view the full photo.

You don't have to name everyone. Deleting an unnamed face or clicking the icon on a photo will place that photo in the 'Ignored' album. You can view the photos you've ignored at any time by clicking Show ignored faces at the top of the 'Unnamed People' album.

Confirm Picasa face suggestions.

Picasa uses the names you add to automatically add face suggestions to your albums. If you see an orange question mark next to a people album, go to the album and confirm these suggestions. Click to keep the photo or to remove the photo from the album. If there are multiple suggestions, you can click Confirm all at the top of the album to mark all the suggestions as correct. Toggle at the top to see just the suggested faces.

Don't worry if you make a mistake when adding name tags -- if a face winds up in the wrong people album, select the photo and click the Remove button at the top (or press the Delete key on your keyboard) to send it back to the 'Unnamed People' album. Learn more about deleting name tags.

Tips:

Add name tags manually: If Picasa misses a face in your photo, you can add it by clicking the Add a person manually button at the bottom of the 'People' tab when viewing the photo.

Change profile photos: You can change the photo displayed next to each album in the People collection. Just right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Mac) the face you'd like to use and select Set as Album Thumbnail.

Choose which folders to scan for faces: Just click Tools > Folder Manager and toggle face detection on/off for any folder.